The eagerly awaited PC version of Grand Theft Auto V was released last month and sold about two million copies in a week, but the problems have already started as Rockstar seems intent on squashing all GTAV mods.

According to Alexander Blade, the developer of ScriptHook, GTAV patch 350.1, released April 30th, checks the game directory for mods and bans the player from online multiplayer if any are found. The patch notes show no mention of this, except the following line:

Fixes for issues caused by launching the game in offline mode

There is no workaround for this patch, except to never allow your copy of GTAV to update to 350.1 or above. The GTAV Steam page is flooded by reports from users who claim that they were banned for modding without ever going online:

The FOV mod allows the user to stretch the field-of-view above the maximum 75, making GTAV look much better on high resolution monitors. Other users reported accidentally picking up money left by hackers and getting the banhammer:

However, Rockstar’s Q&A, published May 8, states that nobody has been banned for using mods offline. The same Q&A also mentions that YouTube GTAV videos Rockstar does not approve of will be taken down, which includes cutscenes, spoilers, in-game entertainment and how-to glitch exploitation videos.

This incident seems like yet another heavy-handed attempt by a video game company to lock its software into a little proprietary box and harshly punish anyone who tries to break out of it. As we’ve seen before, gamers will not forgive and will not forget these fumbles.